Introduction

We’re going to see how to put together a working application. How every single example can be used as a building block for a complex project.

Here is where the wannabe designer in me comes out. We’re going to make the twenty-first-century version of a classic lamp by my favourite Italian designer, Joe Colombo. The object we’re going to build is inspired by a lamp called Aton from 1964.

The lamp, as you can see in Figure 6-1, is a simple sphere sitting on a base with a large hole to keep the sphere from rolling off your desk. This design allows you to orient the lamp in different directions.

In terms of functionality, we want to build a device that would connect to the Internet, fetch the current list of articles on the Make blog, and count how many times the words “peace,” “love,” and “Arduino” are mentioned. With these values, we’re going to generate a colour and display it on the lamp. The lamp itself has a button we can use to turn it on and off, and a light sensor for automatic activation.